NASS is 30 this year. Formed in 1978 when the first political attacks on small schools arose, the Association celebrates this year a position where the arguments in favour of small-scale, human-scale education are almost incontrovertible.

We have readily acknowledged that in good professional hands large schools can achieve remarkable results. We argue only that even in such places it is difficult to build the dynamic partnership possible in well-run small schools between home and school. We argue this is at least as important an element in effective education as good teaching and leadership and research consistently backs this stance.

We have acknowledged the worth of inter-school co-operation represented by clustering for many years. We have acknowledged the success of formal federations that merge school and community identities where this is wanted by those communities to meet needs they have locally identified.

We do NOT support federation imposed by external agencies essentially to resolve administrative problems and which decisions are largely motivated by financial arguments we expose as false. This is the single greatest threat to the nation’s remaining small schools, not least just now, and to NASS’ argument for more small schools in our towns and cities.

NASS began its work in the good hands of people like Stuart Sexton, a leading political adviser of the day, Molly Stiles, National Co-ordinator until 1996 and Bill Goodhand, who has remained our Chairperson for a very long time in which his wisdom, advice, and commitment have played a very valuable role.

The organisation arose to deal with the first political attack on what is now called surplus places. Staffordshire proposed a large slate of closures under this umbrella but masking a certain antipathy towards small schools which internally senior officers saw as educationally questionable anyway. Derbyshire, on the other side of the same hills, took a far more positive stance and has only now, in the oppressive climate of DCSF pressure on unfilled places, and severe squeezing of pupil funding, begun to look at some of its very small schools

Originally founded under the name National Association for the Support of Small Schools (NASS) we have done just that and advised hundreds of schools facing closure proposals on campaign strategies that have often proved very effective. A central resource has been hard evidence of small school virtues through which campaigners can argue their school as an example of best national practice and the last ten years has seen an increasingly successful intensification of our search for just such evidence and we have NOT been shy in telling people the facts.

Support for schools facing closure is our centrally constituted fire-brigade role but we also offer professional advice on small school matters and on education generally. We have many members able to advise us from within their specialist experience and much of this appears in our newsletter articles and reports. The newsletters are the main, regular benefit of membership and we have continued to improve them within our always limited means.

NASS is a small organisation despite its inner strengths. A handful of dedicated people manage our annual business but all as volunteers who naturally have other demands on their time and energies. It matters, therefore, that we have as much general support through membership itself as possible. The 2007 membership rationalisation exercise has been administratively necessary to create a modern, effective database which already, for example, means we can address envelopes electronically and dispense with the task of sticking on labels. We may seem late in achieving it but that reflects the difficulty of doing such important work on slim resources.

The exercise also revealed cases of duplicate addresses where names and schools had become double-entered, as well as people who have moved on and are no longer at the address we had recorded. We have rather sadly found that where schools close we lose touch with people who fought tooth and nail for their school and whose energies we plan in future to try to recruit for the national cause.

Sadly we also still find that some who join us when threatened, and who succeed, usually with our help, feel they do not need to stay as members when we very much need them to strengthen our ability to help others. Subscription remains our main income apart from occasional donations. We receive no Government or Local Authority support and since the Charity Commissioners ruled our work ‘political’ (small ‘p’) we are beyond the remit of many charities that might have endorsed our work. We are trying to amend.

that ruling but it takes time and time remains a problem for us. January is always a financial test for us as subscription renewal arrives.

We can lose touch with schools as headteachers move on and letters addressed still to them are either forwarded or perhaps more likely binned. We hope they would still feel as warmly about our work. NASS is a community association with a professional voice. We are a broad church with members from all walks of life. We welcome committed individuals as much as schools.

We also welcome parish councils, not least where a school has been lost, because we assume they have believed in the work we represent elsewhere.There may be future opportunities to bring education back and we can advise at such a time. Several Anglican dioceses support us through enrolling their Education Directors or Boards but these also change and we are trying to keep better track of such events in future so that we can avoid loss of membership. We have several Rural Community Councils in membership but as with all forms of membership WE DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH!!

As announced in our last newsletters we also plan an autumn conference whose details are reported elsewhere but we need maximum publicity and support for this special anniversary promotional event and do ask you to do your very best to join us in Banbury on Friday September 19th. PLEASE BOOK THE DATE NOW. PLEASE PUT IT IN YOUR DIARY. We have not had so many conferences in recent years so please help make this a VERY SPECIAL one. It is dedicated to exploring just how our work helps children and teachers in smaller schools. More information...

The Committee, a small but very loyal and positive group working for NASS throughout the year, is sharing the effort we now ask of our members. In addition to publishing our “Two Small Schools” booklet, revising our website and representing NASS through lobbying and information monitoring we plan:

1. Our first conference for eight years, planned specifically to publicise the life and work of small schools. Preliminary details are on the next page.
2. A new logo designed to reflect NASS' commitment to the concept of small schools for children everywhere, in town and country alike. NASS adopted the view that this concept, sustained by hard evidence of small school quality strengthens what for 30 years been our constituted purpose, protecting the life and work of existing small schools, their prospects of survival and the health of their largely rural local communities.
3. A 2008 revision of "We need More Small Schools" for publication and widespread distribution including to every member of both Houses of Parliament, to local authorities, rural community councils, the major rural organisations and both Anglican and Roman Catholic dioceses.
4. Efforts to ensure the next House of Commons small schools seminar, due 2008, takes place. We have agreed Tuesday June 10th with Matthew Taylor, who arranged the previous seminars. It was in doubt because we were uncertain if NSSF and HSE, our partners who organised the first three events, have remained quiet regarding 2008. We are happy to take our turn at organising it and of course inviting them to participate.
5. Revision of our basic recruiting leaflet to form the basis of a second nationwide mail shot to every school under 110 on roll. Whilst mailshots have a recognised threshold for effective response levels we plan this time more actively to target these 3000 schools and encourage membership.
6. Extension of our basic advisory and comprehensive information support service to schools facing closure or reorganisation through a campaigning package to guide local people, often few in number, as to what we have found helpful and often successful. Clearly we can offer no guarantees but believe that there are fundamental elements that do give a better chance of success as well as particular cautions and particular legal factors.
7. As described above efforts to strengthen membership outside the remit of a national mail shot, thereby to strengthen funds. We regularly lobby key organisations and representative groups of decision-makers as to the quality of the life and work of small schools.
8. As active a programme of fund-raising as possible, as present plans will eat into our useful but far from inexhaustible reserves. Re-vamping of our website to provide improved information represents an on-going increased commitment already undertaken.
9. A renewed submission to the Charities Commission for official registration, denied before on the grounds we were 'political' in opposing closure proposals. Our revised constitution reflects modern conditions more acceptable to the Commissioners. The newsletter is notice of implementing it at the AGM (15th. March ) The AGM Notice also comes with this newsletter. The revised document is available on our website.
10. Last, to publicise as much as possible, the major threat rapidly emerging to hundreds of small schools and the nation's rural fabric in nearly a dozen counties, including Wales, from major reorganisations of school provisioning involving widespread programmes of closure or federation based on the alleged unviability of any school with less than 100-110 pupils or four classes. In addition to helping individual schools or areas as usual we will alert media and other local groups to the best of our ability.

Asked to inform an article in The Guardian by Mike Baker, former BBC Education correspondent, an article that was very positive about small schools, we were then asked two days later to provide evidence of our growing concerns about the return of wholesale closures for the education correspondent of The Observer, the company’s Sunday edition, and were surprised to find the story not only accepted as worthy in its own right but front-page Sunday morning headlines.

The phones and e-mails flooded in. On radio and television, nationally and locally, and in the Press, aross the UK, we were able to argue the very effective line that the rate of closures revealed so far in Gwynedd, Herefordshire, Shropshire and the Isle of Wight, if rolled out across the country, would wipe out every village school with less than four classes - the Shropshire standard, or 100 pupils, the figure used by LEAs reviewing their estate in 2006/7.

We took the welcome opportunity to make the facts of small school quality far more widely known than our ever limited resources usually allow, and every person enquiring was sent our e-mail documents arguing the case with hard evidence. Furthermore, Jim Knight, the Rural Schools Minister, asked us to come to Darlington for a meeting at Mowlam Hall with his staff. Four NASS Committee members attended that meeting. Department officers wanted to discuss exactly what was the situation in small schools “on the ground.”

As a result of the intense exposure we have been able to explain not only the strong case for small schools academically, meeting Government standards and often better, but to advance the close links with parents and local communities as a better and natural answer to growing concerns for the nature of childhood itself. We now advance education in small schools as a perfect antidote to “toxic childhood” not only because it better addresses the crucial relationships for children between their teachers and their parents but also has been shown by extrapolation from profound US evidence to save money on the often enormously expensive costs of later educational failure and family breakdown while generating higher taxes from better and more enduring school outcomes.

We have also exposed the flawed nature of the financial arguments for closing small schools invariably behind closure proposals. There is growing evidence that projected savings from closures rarely materialise and, if available at all in the short-term, spread very thinly over the rest of the system. Small schools represent a fragment of overall budgets and though those unit costs suggest money draining from the rest it is just not the case when the full costs of closure, not least long-term transport and capital borrowing costs, are properly included instead of best-guess estimates designed to massage the closure case. Freedom of Information is proving effective at unlocking the true financial picture.

Hamsteels Primary in Durham was told its roof would cost £65 000, one reason or closure. Under FOI parents discovered there was no document even asking estimates and against which they planned to seek their own estimates. The LEA had simply inserted the figure into the proposals. NASS believes that exposing such duplicity can rally open-minded elected-member support for our contention that such behaviour flies in the face of High Court judicial rulings and disenfranchises councillors by distancing them from always contentious matters like school closure. Councillors can become very angry when they are made to look foolish by facts revealed by alert and informed campaigners

Six ruling Isle of Wight Tory councillors have broken ranks to oppose the wholesale closures proposed there. The Island is in a ferment of protest with all its Parish Councils and most of its towns against proposals which still being stubbornly progressed by Cabinet and officers. The hard facts of small school success have been publicly dismissed as “a myth!” It is sad when senior professionals so reveal their sheer ignorance……..or mischief in pursuing their own agendas.

Barbara Taylor and Mervyn Benford attended a protest meeting in Shrewsbury which helped establish a county-wide group to campaign against 22 proposed closures, which, though rapidly recalled, are certain to emerge again on an area by area basis, the stealth approach favoured by many authorities, such as Cheshire, Kent and Powys, wherein only a few schools at a time are closed, impacting less on overall consciousness. NASS urges such collective action, not least where review is area-based, since the smaller threat still represents eventual wholesale closures.

The Herefordshire proposals were so draconian that the resulting outcry included even an article in “The Financial Times!” Here again proposals have been recalled and we understand possibly, put on hold for three years. NASS understands individual schools previously under review remain so but the LEA is also in negotiations with the Government about resourcing rural areas better. The diocese was strongly supportive and most closures would probably have been referred automatically to independent adjudication. The diocese also includes the 22 south Shropshire schools up for closure.

Particularly dramatic was the plan to close four secondary schools to make two much larger ones. One pairing would have closed our member school, Fairfield, in Peterchurch, rated as outstanding in all it does by OFSTED last year despite having a pupil roll well below what most officers would deem educationally viable. As previously its teaching of some science lessons in classes of 60-75 was particularly praised. Currently it is second best secondary in the country on value added and Maths/English performance.

All pupils at Bromyard would have had a twice-daily bus journey to and from Leominster for five years and this very much shocked the local MP, despite being of the same Party as the Council. The cost at current and future rates and sheer discomfort of such a daily double journey would have been enormous.

NASS has been delighted to advise and support in these three areas of England where the crisis threatened, if rolled out on the same scale over the rest of the country, to remove all schools with less than four classes or a 100 pupils, most of our remaining village schools.

We report later a meeting of Gwynedd Heads and governors in early March at which governors and staff of 38 schools directly or indirectly implicated in the LEA’s reorganisation proposals met to hear news from NASS and relevant advice. Though consultation is now extended by six months and the number facing closure reduced to 22, we urge members not to be disarmed. Friends on the inside warn that counties may well withdraw from wholesale reorganisation as Assembly time hearing the inevitable appeals will block the time-tables. Instead they are likely to revert to picking off one school at a time, as Pembrokeshire did so successfully a few years ago. Stirrings in the Welsh Assembly on a growing rural education crisis may influence future policy direction.

As a direct result of the heightened focus of recent weeks NASS would draw members’ attention to the following new evidence:

1. Birth-rate is not only rising but back to the levels where it began to fall 30 years ago. Primary places will again be filling up and we told our DCSF contacts we believe the surplus space arguments, which they confirmed were always largely an urban problem and should not result in village school closures, are now virtually dead and something to that effect should be noted by Ministers.
2. New housing estatess in two villages close to the M6/A6 in Cumbria add to similar news from Cornwall and Somerset that reflects the predicted migration from town to country forecast by DEFRA and the Commission for Rural Communities. The Commission is reporting such news to the Government and DCSF officials were also aware of it.
3. A Shropshire village primary school on the closure list has calculated likely transport costs and they match Scottish figures up-dated to a figure now closer to £1500 (£1000 was a 2005 figure!) Fuel costs are forecast to rise a further 30% this year. Transport costs now virtually erode any savings alleged from closure. FOI leaflet DCA 1/05 explains rights of access to official information: and will help give access to relevant LEA documents and the statistics and related analyses that Councils have used. See www.foi.gov.uk
4. Scottish campaigners have found that bussing 25 rural children to the next school costs over £30 000 per year, the cost of a newly qualified teacher. Typical small schools cost between £15 000 and £25 000 per year to heat, light, clean and maintain. Additional transport costs almost always outweigh such overheads and eat well into the staffing budget of the school. RSN now uses an intriguing slogan "Councils would replace teachers with bus drivers and they expect education standards to improve?"

SRSN sees PPP projects as a financial scandal. “We have investigated these and found they cost more and more each year, squeezing councils’ finances. In around ten years time the unitary charge payments will be astronomical.”

Very recent (08/02/08) Scottish government figures on relative rural/urban pupil education costs expose the lie that rural schools drain resources from urban children. “There are 8 councils with no children educated in rural schools under 70 on roll with pupil costs averaging £4594. There are 8 mainland councils with 8% to 22% of their pupils educated in rural schools with fewer than 70 pupils. If resources are draining away from urban schools you would expect to find a large jump in per pupil cost but the average, at. £4421, is £173 per pupil less than those areas with no rural pupil.

Angus, Moray and Stirling - all rural areas- spend less than £4000 per pupil. Aberdeen City spends £5000 per pupil. Highland has 17.2% of its children in small rural schools but costs over £200 per pupil less than Glasgow City on average. Moreover educational attainment in remote rural areas currently outstrips that of large urban areas. Just exactly who is subsidising who?”

NASS thanks Sandy Longmuir and SRSN members for their consistent, forensic analysis of statistics involved in closure proposals and the misleading mis-information they invariably contain. New statutory guidance in Scotland seems set to insist ALL facts relevant to closing or retaining small schools are published for consultation. The reference to “adequate and sufficient information” in statutory DCSF guidance to English LEAs is clearly in the same spirit.

A Morayshire 2-pupil school is the latest to be kept from closing by an SNP Government determined to support local communities and their schools. We are grateful for this news to our Member John Nisbet, who helped lead the seminal Aberdeen study of the impact of small school closures and first broadened the economic debate. Moray’s response noted the commitment to sustainable rural communities. The SNP and the children’s mother saw little overall educational advantage to the children in transferring to another school.

I have had a reply to my question about whether Kent County Council's Primary Strategy (schools should not have less than 100 children) is lawful, given the presumption against closure :

"It is rather disappointing as it seems LEAs can simply ignore the advice and do what they like, begging the question, why bother with the advice in the first place? I have come across this before with SEN codes of practice and good practice guidance published by government, but which actually LEAs have no obligation to implement.

However, if a school were closed, its supporters might be in a stronger position to seek a judicial review if, as was the case with Ripple school, the school was educationally sound, local support was overwhelmingly in favour of the school, it did not have surplus places etc. If it is clear the LEA has gone through the motions of consultation but ignored the results, the presumption against closure advice might help back up a High Court case. Too late for Ripple, but might help another school in the future.

Kind regards Jane P"

NASS welcomes information like this from local areas. Jane believes Kent has suspended its review programme but shares our concerns at the seeming ease with which LEAs can ignore statutory guidance since there is virtually no sanction against them unless a diocese uses its access to adjudication to the maximum possible, which some are reluctant to do. We made this point also to the DCSF officials we met. High Court action remains a final step as there are routes through the expense involved. A child can bring the action, or a parent subject to benefits, and obtain Legal Aid. With now limited access to independent appraisal it may be necessary more and more to try to reverse decisions in the High Court citing failure to follow legal precedent and unreasonable neglect of statutory guidance.

February 2008 saw a formal announcement to the effect that six Somerset schools, including Stawley, were to be proposed for ‘hard’ federation, which means “amalgamation.”

We have praised this LEA in the past. We spoke at its small school conference in 1999. Its then director had proposed a radical idea to reduce secondary and FE transport costs, then becoming unacceptable, whereby a senior pupil needing but a desk, a PC and mobile phone contact to a tutor could use an empty place at a local school for one or two days a week, saving bus costs. Devon had also shown interest in the idea. We thought it fantastic but have never heard if it happened. It was a novel approach to space usage long before Stephen Twigg advised us that village schools should not be closed because other solutions to surplus space were available.

Maybe Stawley inspired the extended service concept. We endorsed its plan for a major re-build when, following the retirement of the post-mistress, who was also a school governor, it proposed a major-re-build to include provision of postal, medical, banking and other facilities to make a truly community service school. They sought various forms of funding but failed when the LEA refused support. Now they are finally up for “federation” However, an old out-building in the school grounds has been converted by local effort and provides local shop and postal service.

Their review was under Somerset’s first roll threshold of 40, recently raised to 50. Its own has fluctuated between 30 and 40 but its recent, glowing OFSTED report was with roll 34. It notes families moving into the area too. It would be a perfect place for DCSF’s Innovations Unit to pioneer small successful community service primary schools. Closure is risked if these six schools fail to find a partner!

Winsham, 16 pupils, is in the County’s Good Schools Guide. Hemington has had its low number of pupils for 30 years and has not suddenly dropped roll. It also has a disabled toilet but the Head says these official published complaints against its smallest schools relate to the LEA’s School Design template that does not include having schools for less than 50 pupils, which inevitably fail therefore. Somerset allows no alternatives to its plans yet closure guidance requires alternatives to be considered. But federation is NOT closure.

Somerset tells the public that federation has been successful in reducing viability issue and providing better learning opportunities but offers limited, highly selective evidence to justify its claims. The LEA fails to mention any of the abundantly available evidence of small school success. There are answers to its objections but it needs new vision focused on contemporary issues not past parameters. If small schools were accepted as desirable models these other problems would go away.

In the Notes to Editors the LEA makes it clear surplus space prompts this action, which denies Stephen Twigg’s earlier advice to us. It then reveals its educational mentality, rooted in those tired old assumptions education officers never back with evidence but which sound plausible to local politicians and even many professionals. There is NO evidence that small peer groups, mixed age and ability working, poor facilities, absence of school halls reduces either opportunity or attainment. Quite the opposite is true. But who tells those who make the decisions that they are hearing flawed arguments?

Somerset shows concern for children in poor circumstances but ignores the 2006 Scottish evidence showing such children do best in smaller schools. The LEA presents highly-paid professional supposition detached from evidence, even citing alleged difficulties with a ten-subject curriculum that do not bear the test of scrutiny as OFSTED and other studies have shown this is no problem at all.

Meanwhile a whole slate of schools under 40 on roll whose own inspections deny the County’s claims has had their independence cancelled and their future compromised and review now moves to those with less than 50 pupils. Where does such a practice end?

School Forum THREAT TO FUTURE Somerset’s School Forum is recommending that under new procedures for calculating grant from 2010/11 it wants progressive reduction in the lump sum protecting small-school staffing and only one teacher until roll passes 30 - This is where the STEALTH factor lies.

Currently governing bodies can close any sites they manage. Amalgamations such as Somerset imposes, now or as Heads leave, will be new schools with single governing bodies able to close constituent school sites without any reference to the statutory requirements placed on LEAs including consultation and access to adjudication.

Dorset and Warwickshire cases show it happens when budgets are stretched. Similar factors have brought governors in Cumbria and Nottinghamshire to propose closing their own schools. If LEAs endorse Somerset thinking about future DSG arrangements and persuade the Government likewise classic conditions can occur for imposing financial pressures, even wilfully, inducing in governors of small schools the self-destruct mentality. 30-1 staff ratios deter parents and add to governor anxiety.

Growing pressure nationally for ‘hard’ federations hides behind the convenient excuse it avoids closures. NASS believes governors need to avoid undue complacency and be both vigilant and alert to longer-term threats that may be conscious strategy. NASS believes countless small schools are potentially at risk of later closure from ‘hard’ federation, amalgamation in DCSF terms.

In our long history we have seen smaller schools tagged on to larger ones with little professional vision for working such radical organisation. The Head pops in to take assemblies and meet people and little other collaboration. The smaller partner slowly slips away. Parents accept it as the school has lost its earlier vibrancy under independent management and leadership. We urge you as NASS members to engage more with local discussions and consultations to expose the dominant large school presence on local groups advising both local and national government, not least on funding. A further positive effect of the new high profile for small school virtues has been a growing networking between agencies concerned for the general well-being of children. A number of new contacts have been made, including more sympathetic funding forums and new rural agency contacts.

NASS endorses amalgamation only where:

1. all communities involved want it to resolve particular problems or needs;
2. it has long-term site guarantees and an escape clause if local circumstances change;
3. it is adequately resourced and encourages the new professional vision appropriate to working across several sites.

NASS’ Gwynedd meeting at Porthmadog Leisure Centre helped start the big campaign Ffred urges upon Welsh small school support groups. A large group representing 38 threatened schools heard NASS explain the good news about small schools, the flawed educational and financial arguments used to promote closures and amalgamations and the relevance of rising birth-rate and out-migration from towns. Particularly useful in a Welsh-medium area where the Nationalist Council was driving the closures was the evidence from Scotland that among all those very successful small schools reported at the top of the performance tables last year Gaelic-medium schools did best of all, even in English. The meeting generously covered NASS costs and individual e-mail comments after the meeting were very complimentary.

NASS has accepted an invitation to attend a meeting in Cardiff on April 9th. at which such persons will discuss with those two Assembly Committee chairpersons a more positive view of small schools and rural education than has hitherto obtained. Both Chairs are Assembly Members and have pushed to establish these Committees to study the situation with a view tio influencing policy and preventing closures and amalgamations currently proposed as prolifically across Wales as we see in England.

With Human Scale Education, who began the practice, NASS is organising the next House of Commons Small Schools Seminar, due in 2008. Anyone interested in small schools is welcome but we need to advise names for security.

It is to be held at Portcullis House (opposite Big Ben) at 2.00- 3.30 on Tuesday 10th. June. It features talks by three leading NASS headteachers, Jenny Dixon from Armathwaite, Chris Barker from Fairfield High School and Andrew Penman head of the all-age federation in the Scilly Islands.

It will be good to have as many as possible to demonstrate the commitment to small schools so please book by sending your name to Brenda Edwards at Red Roof Barn, Coombe Keynes, Wareham, Dorset BH 20 5PS by 30th. April